1. Field of the Invention
The present invention pertains generally to the field of wheeled carts, and particularly to a wheeled cart for carrying gear on a trail or other outdoor terrain.
2. Description of Related Art
Currently, backpacking involves carrying the minimum amount of supplies necessary for survival on one's back to remote areas unaccessible by motorized vehicles. A backpack often weighs 30 or more pounds, thus preventing anyone who cannot carry a backpack from enjoying a wilderness experience. Further, when young children or persons otherwise unable to carry all or any of their own supplies desires to backpack, someone must pack in and out the child/physically challenged person's supplies plus their own, resulting in an extremely large and heavy backpack. The hardship of carrying such a load means that families or groups that include young children or a physically challenged person rarely undertake a backpacking excursion. What is needed is an easier way to carry a heavy load of supplies other than by carrying on the back.
Wheelbarrows and hand trucks provide a way to carry heavy loads without strapping to one's back, but they are not useful for hiking. The wheelbarrow is too difficult to balance and too heavy when loaded and pushed along uneven terrain. The hand truck is hard to steer and too low to the ground bumping into rocks and other elevated spots on the ground, the wheels are too small tending to get stuck in potholes, ruts, muddy and sandy areas, the wheels are also set wide apart making it impossible to travel on narrow footpaths, and, the frame is too bulky tending to snare on passing vegetation. Both the wheelbarrow and hand truck are so troublesome to use on outdoor terrain they are unfit for this type of use.
In answer to the need in the art for a way of carrying supplies over outdoor terrain without strapping the supplies to one's back, the art has devised a variety of wheeled carts. Sharpe, U.S. Pat. No. 4,055,354 (1977), teaches a hikers cart having a pair of baskets/containers for holding gear that straddles a single wheel that is disposed centrally on a long frame having two handlebars. The problem with the hikers cart taught in Sharpe is that the single, centrally disposed wheel results in a cart that has a tendency to tip therefore requiring two operators. The Sharpe hikers cart would be impractical for hikes where two able bodied operators are unavailable or where it is otherwise desirable to have only one operator.
Other references teach an outdoor wheeled cart or carrier that requires a single operator: Lemmon, U.S. Pat. No. 4,236,723 (1980), Douglas et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,838,565 (1989), Gardner, U.S. Pat. No. 5,330,212 (1994), and Stringer, U.S. Pat. No. 5,564,720 (1996).
Lemmon (1980) teaches a hip cart featuring a frame having two wide stanced wheels on either side of the distal end of the frame, said frame connected to two horizontal arms that are then attached to a hip harness worn by an operator. A load is transported when the operator walks forward thereby pulling the cart behind. Stringer (1996), teaches a portable game cart for carrying game featuring a foldable frame having two wheels on either side of the distal end of the frame, wherein said frame can be folded in half and attached to a backpack harness for carrying when not in use. The Stringer device strongly resembles a hand truck and is unsuitable for trail use for all the reasons associated with the hand truck and discussed above. Gardner (1994) teaches a collapsible wheeled carrier for duck and goose decoys and the like featuring a wheeled nacelle having two handles and two wheels on either side of the central portion of the nacelle. Douglas et al. (1989), teaches a rolling travois featuring a load support frame having a roller comprising a plurality of disks on the distal end of the frame, said frame connected to an arm pivotedly connected to a backpack frame by which the frame is pulled forward by an operator wearing said backpack frame. None of these single operator, two wheeled devices described above are suitable for use on narrow, uneven trails or footpaths because the wheels or roller, as the case may be, are positioned too far apart and simply do not fit on the path. Further, neither of the one or two operator wheeled devices described thus far can be used to move through vegetated terrain because the wide front end of the frame and wheels tend to get stuck when passing by or between closely spaced vegetation.
Another single operator device that teaches carrying supplies other than on the back is taught in Ewer, DE 4202135-A1 (1993). Ewer (1993) teaches a rucksack carrying frame featuring a small wheel(s) that can be folded out to convert the rucksack into a wheeled trolley. The rucksack frame is pivotedly connected to an arm which is pivotedly connected to a waist harness. The Ewer rucksack can be used in two different ways, as an ordinary rucksack carried on the hiker's back when the small wheel(s) are folded in, the arm folded up and the ruck sack frame connected to a shoulder harness, and alternatively, as a wheeled trolley when the wheel(s) are folded outward, the arm disconnected from the shoulder harness thereby releasing the rucksack to the ground where it can then be pulled behind the hiker. While the Ewer device may well fit on narrow footpaths, it still cannot be used by a hiker when moving through thick brush or rocky terrains because the rucksack will likely get stuck after the vegetation falls in behind the hiker's legs. Further, the wheeled trolley pulled by the arm as taught in Ewer appears to be prone to tipping over whenever the wheel(s) at the base of the rucksack encounters rough terrain thereby making the load topple off balance.
The devices taught in the Lemmon and Douglas references also appear to be prone to tipping over as well where the wheels encounter uneven ground toppling the entire load to the ground. In the event that any of the wheeled devices taught in Ewer, Lemmon, or Douglas et al. do tip over, it appears that the operator must then turn about-face and set the device upon its wheel(s) again which probably requires the operator to first remove the harness. What would be better is a wheeled cart that can be pushed thereby placing a single operator in a better position to correct or compensate for tipping.
Finally, none of the references above teach a way of controlling the speed of a wheeled cart when moving down hill, or controlling backsliding when moving up hill. It is to these ends and others that the wheeled cart of the present invention is directed.